the profits of character assassination

Republicans, and certain Tea Party leaders, who use words and images irresponsibly, know exactly what they're doing when they walk along the thin line demarcating civility and barbarism. They intend to incite passions and to demonize opponents, and they have been fairly successful on both accounts. The question that should be put to them, after the carnage in Tucson, is this: was it worth it?

contradictions of the insanity defense

The Tea Party and its fellow travelers will hit the “mental illness” explanation as hard as the alleged shooter’s likely legal defense team; which will be curious, since law and order Republicans will likely decry such a defense. Hence, we could witness the following display of doublespeak from Republicans and Tea Party extremists: the alleged shooter is insane, he is not part of the anti-government movement; but the alleged shooter is sane enough to face trial and, potentially, capital punishment. It will be interesting to see how these two opposed claims will be reconciled.

Sarah Palin's chickens...

have come home to roost. It comes as no surprise that reckless, anti-government rhetoric has inspired violent action.

“We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list,” Ms. Giffords said last March. “But the thing is the way that she has it depicted has the cross hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences to that.”

I suspect Palin will turn this shooting into a political advantage. She'll make herself out as the victim of the "liberal media" for associating her with the attack on the Congressperson. She'll play the liberal media card while serving as a paid Fox News analyst, probably on Sean Hannity's program.

Meanwhile, Eric Cantor (the Republican House Majority leader) has wisely postponed debate on the proposed total repeal of “Obamacare,” which was the object of most of the Tea Party's symbolic violence. He's likely aware the extremist rhetoric that House Republicans -- newly infused by Tea Party supported members -- deployed last year would not play well with the American public under the circumstances. Who knows how the rhetoric will be reshaped.

seeking 'good government' republicans

What is striking to me about politics from the conservative side of things (conservative understood quite broadly) is that no claims have been made that conservatives would be more "competent" governors. This might be because the rhetorical emphasis on the shibboleth of "small government" gets in the way of an interest in "good government." Or I suppose "good government" is construed narrowly as "good for business" or "creating jobs in the private sector." Political Republicans (i.e. the governing group of Republicans, not the Rogueistas) appear to see no positive role for government other than playing the role of matador, getting out of the way of the charging bull of liberty and entrepreneurial initiative. However, if the conservative side were to turn from the mantra of reducing government to that of a "government that works" (i.e., one in which the trains run on time, not simply "balancing the budget"), then candidates like Romney or even Bloomberg would make sense. But since government by definition means incompetence for the Right, these possible candidates don't seem viable at the moment. (Another possibility, Petraeus, has wisely demurred). Thus a motley crue of Palin, Huckabee, Pawlenty, and Jindal must suffice for a Republican Party geared more towards hair band aesthetics than substantive politics.

the democrats' waterloo or the republicans' antietam?

Tomorrow’s mid-term election portends to be the end of American civilization.

Or not. It will be interesting to watch how these Tea Partysan candidates, who, paradoxically and unconsciously, are running for governing positions on an anti-government platform, will actually function once in government and seated among other governing Republicans. The anti-governmentarians will be a rump within the Republican caucus and they will either consign themselves to irrelevance by holding to their fantastical visions of democratic politics and to their “angry mob” symbolics (and one must consider how much of this anger is real and how much of it is show for the purpose of getting elected by a purportedly angry electorate, as depicted by emocons like Glenn Beck); or they will adapt to business as usual, which means governing according to the principle of compromise (i.e. according to an ethic of responsibility) rather than according to the principle of non-compromise (i.e. according to an ethic of conviction). I suspect they'll soon be fighting to distribute “pork” just like other piggish Democrats and Republicans have for quite a long time now.

However, it is interesting how much the war in Afghanistan is a non-issue, given its costs in human and economic capital.

One foreign policy issue does cut close(r) to home. Insofar as the Mexican diaspora is construed as a terrorist threat, I do expect the new Republican majority to get down to building a Great Wall on the southern border and to seek, at the national level, something akin to Arizona's SB 1070.

palling around with Paladino

Mr Paladino is the face of the new Republican Party, which has been infused by Tea Partysan resentment (the losers of recent American history). There was a time when Republican candidates would have expresses their various antipathies towards racial and sexual minorities (not to mention women) in indirect ways, using code words or euphemisms. But now that strategy is associated with the despised RINOcrats, the "weaklings" whom Tea Partysans seek to eliminate. Today it's good to be mavericky and to be rude and offensive, which is the form that "political correctness" takes for the Baggers: in other words, it's politically correct to be uncivil. Then, when the so-called MSM responds, one can always claim victimhood. It's a winning strategy: perp at one moment, victim of a media crime the next.

the year of reading tea leaves VI: Republicans

The Republicans' main recommendation for reducing deficits is to ban earmarks. However, they did talk a good game about cutting government spending, making government smaller, etc., when they had control of the White House and Congress. This has earned them the reputation as being the party of small government. Or was that just Ron Paul? Anyway, the Department of Homeland Security wasn't created on their watch.

Tea Partysans use this apparent hypocrisy of the establishment Republicans as a rallying cry and allegedly this is a sign that they are not simply the shock troops of the Republican Party (although they welcome establishment Republicans to their rallies and national conventions and pay at least one of them – the prodigal, former Rogue-Governor – handsomely). They would happily rid the nation of the FDA, FBI, CIA, Social Security Administration, Medicare (although it seems most of the Tea Partysans are receiving it), Homeland Security, FCC (because they don't care whether porn films are shown at 7pm on all networks), etc. Back to 1790, when a muzzleloader and the Bible were all the government one needed.

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I think coherence (such as it is) will come in the form of votes for Republican Party candidates. Now these Republican candidates, running as "rogues", will appeal to already existing incoherent Tea Partysan "ideals". Once in office, these rogue Republicans will make symbolic gestures towards this new base fraction, such as speeches about succession, the introduction of Constitutional amendments that have no chance of passage (for example, one that would abolish the IRS or abolish the 17th amendment) and the like; the same sort of thing Reagan did to appease his social conservative base (i.e., support a pro-life amendment in words, but not in deeds). But they'll vote with the establishment Republican bloc, will attach earmarks for their districts and states. Business as usual, American democracy in action.

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The following passage in Steinfels's old book on The Neoconservatives seems apt as a description of the present state of contemporary American conservatism (as it is manifested by the Republican Party and its Tea Partysan allies).

In our time the classic statement of the benefits to be secured in taking one's political adversaries seriously -- and in having political adversaries worthy of being taken seriously in the first place -- is found in Lionel Trilling's preface to The Liberal Imagination. Trilling begins with the observation that has since become the commonplace we already noted: 'In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition.' Such a situation poses two dangers. First, the absence of conservative or reactionary ideas 'does not mean, of course, that there is no impulse to conservatism or to reaction.' It simply means that such impulses do not 'express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.' They may do worse, for 'it is just when a movement despairs of having ideas that it turns to force.'

Trilling’s vision of the character of opposition to the dominant liberal tradition captures almost exactly the current reaction to the liberal political order of the moment: "irritable mental gestures” which only vaguely resemble ideas sums up the Tea Party movement. However, one should notice an additional element in the current reaction against the liberal tradition (or, rather, the reaction within the liberal tradition). The motive force behind these gestures is religious, not in the sense of organized religion or any particular body of faith, but rather in the structural sense of actions motivated by the force of a collective idea that is not susceptible to the test of (its) reality. Today's conservative and/or Republican political vision is fundamentally chiliastic. And even if the predicted doomsday never arrives, the fundamental faith in fear is not shaken. The Tea Party charivari blithely staggers on.

the republican brand

The McCain campaign (if not John McCain himself) is as emotionally stable as Alex Rodriguez when he's in a room with Madonna. It's (he's) angry and resentful at one moment, then respectful and civil at another. Which McCain will show up at the final debate? Palin is comfortable with an attacking style and doesn't seem worried about the consequences (as her actions and inactions concerning the Alaskan trooper indicate). She is an appealing attack dog, whereas McCain comes off as a grumpy old man when he goes negative. For that reason, I suspect McCain will not try to ayersize Obama Wednesday night. If he does, it will be the final misstep in a campaign which will become the textbook on how not to run for president.

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It has to be dawning on McCain, the son and grandson of four-star Navy admirals, that he has a good chance to lose the race to Obama, raised by a single mother (who was an anthropologist). Can an October Surprise such as the capture of Osama Bin Laden reverse McCain's fortunes?

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If Obama-Biden are elected I think the low level political slime artists will slink back to their safe houses: talk radio and think tanks like the Heritage Foundation. In the face of a national economic emergency, FoxSpace might change its tune if Rupert Murdoch's rapprochement with Obama holds and Roger Ailes is canned (not a likely scenario though). However, in the darkness of political defeat, a dozen foetid conspiracy theories take root. What is remarkable about the chattering class of Republicans is how they spent the 1990s trying to undo the outcome of two presidential elections. Will they spend their precious resources to undo this election if it doesn't go their way? 

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The Republican party would face a serious choice in the wake of a defeat. Does it become the party of Palinoconservatives, i.e.,  a party of anti-intellectualism, an anti-government party that gives people reason to be anti-government when Republicans are in charge, a party of unrealistic libertarianism, a party of moral minoritarians whose unchristian behavior belies their professed faith? Or does it move towards the center and reclaim for the Republican brand a more rational and less apocalyptic version of conservatism?

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Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh will continue to entertain their audiences and will be well compensated for it. But they don't rise to the level of significance that someone like Father Coughlin did during the 1930s. I think more serious opposition to an Obama presidency could emerge from House Republicans (as it did in the 1990s). The Republicans also have two congenial figures to draw on to rehabilitate their brand: Huckabee and Gingrich (whose fall from grace seems to have been forgotten).

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Since economic issues will be central for the foreseeable future, I'd expect the moral minoritarians (i.e., James Dobson and Tony Perkins) to become increasingly irrelevant. Unfortunately for Obama (if he's elected), the economic reality he'll face is being shaped by Bush and Paulson.  

*

Alaska is a tiny state: population 670,000. Wasilla, AK is a blip on the Google Earth screen: population 9,780. 62,000 people live in my neighborhood; 2.5 million in my borough. Palin's "executive experience" doesn't qualify her to run a neighborhood block association much less the country if McCain were stricken.  Palin will have to add some substance to her record to be viable as a national candidate in 2012 (obviously she feels -- erroneously -- that running the Congress as vice-president would help on that front). She will remain viable within the Republican party no matter what she does. Every Republican fundraiser will want Palin on their program. However, if she remains governor (i.e., survives the abuse of power charges) she won't enter the 2012 Republican primary season in the same position that Hillary Clinton did in 2007, as the presumptive favorite. I expect Huckabee, Gingich, and Romney to be back. Palin would face challenges from these types even if she is the sitting vice-president.

will our media connect the dots between...

George Bush, before the Israeli Knesset:

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

and

Israel and Syria will begin indirect negotiations in Instanbul in a few weeks, in an effort to reach a peace agreement. (...) Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told Haaretz on Wednesday that 'there had been a development in Syrian positions and the contacts with Syria are a historic breakthrough.' Olmert added that 'these exchanges have been ongoing for a long time and they have now matured.'

republican purge trials

The Washington Post is reporting that Mitt Romney "won" a straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference (35% to 34%) over John McCain. It is amusing to see Republicans engaged in identity politics. It will be interesting to see if McCain tries to pass the "true conservative" litmus test. If he doesn't, perhaps we'll remember 2008 as the year of the Great Purges, with Limbaugh and Dobson competing to become the American Vyshinsky.

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photo credit: (Wikipedia) Andrey Vyshinsky

habitat for inhumanity

Random associations...

Mitt Romney on the road map to Republican victory:

"But we're in a house that Reagan built. It's important that we, as Republicans, stay in the house that Reagan built."

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Gail Collins commenting on the future plans of two former presidential candidates:

"Farewell to John Edwards and Rudy Giuliani. Guess which one is planning to devote his life to helping the poor? No fair looking it up."

rudy can fail

Rudy is out, which shows that bad guys do finish last (or 4th). But what lies ahead for the Republican party? Republican punditry and the Tancredo-Minutemen-Dobbsified party base seems to be most interested in finding the candidate who would kill the most jihadists, expel the most illegal immigrants, and waterboard the most "enemy combatants"; the one who would establish a 100 year viceroyship in Iraq, and the one who would wage total war on taxes. It takes a tough guy to do this: hence, the monotone and monogender tableaux on the stages of the Republican debates. "Compassionate Conservatism" is simply no longer in vogue. Whereas G. W. Bush claimed the Republican party was inclusive (remember the carnival of multicultural togetherness that was staged at the 2000 Republican convention), republicanism/conservatism today seems to have explicitly embraced exclusion/exclusiveness. This is apparent in the hand-wringing over which candidate is a "true conservative" (Governor Huckabee, you need not apply). Ironically, the race for the nomination has boiled down to two candidates, Romney and McCain, who score low on the Sanford-Binet Conservative Intelligence Scale. However, as long as these candidates serve up a testosterone charged political vision,  a 40th percentile conservative might yet satisfy the base instincts of the base.

when the party's over

The outcome of the Republican primaries so far portends disaster for the party in the fall election. Among the leading candidates, two are largely unacceptable to the majority of republican voters (Huckabee and Romney); a third has no vision beyond what happened between 8:48 am and 11:59 pm on 9/11/01; a fourth does his best politicking on reruns of Law & Order, and a fifth is anathema to the Tancredo-Dobbs-Minutemen set because of his support for "immigration reform."

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A speculative view: the 1960s (the Vietnam war and Civil Rights activism) shattered the Democrats' "New Deal Coalition." The Republican party benefited from the flight of southern whites and blue collar Democrats (so-called Reagan Democrats) during the 20 years of Reagan/Bush/Bush. Now the Reagan Coalition is fragmented, and again an unpopular war is one factor. I've never understood how the Republicans could hold together a coalition of corporate conservatives, free market conservatives, big and small business, so-called independents, and social conservatives for so long without splintering. Maybe it required exogenous events: the Iraq war and the incompetence of G. W. Bush

how many jihadists have you killed today?

The Republicans are competing for the title of  the Fastest and Most Efficient Gun in the West. The last time I saw this many old men in suits discussing killing and maiming was in The Godfather I. One exception: Ron Paul doesn't do this, and so he's irrelevant. Even the President of 9/11 is struggling to keep pace with the disciple of Joseph Smith, Jr., who would double the size of Gitmo, presumably to be run by a private hotel chain. Torture and turndown service. McCain is surging ahead 100 years: that's how long he'll keep U. S. troops in Iraq. And it was nice to see Fred Thompson come out of his writer's strike induced coma during the last debate. 

*

In a perfect world, politics would imitate art. What if the Republican debates could be filtered through dialogue from Starship Troopers? What if...

Giuliani: We must meet this threat with our courage, our valor, indeed with our very lives to ensure that human civilization, not insect, dominates this galaxy NOW AND ALWAYS!

McCain: We will find those who did it, we'll smoke them out of their holes. We'll get them running and we'll bring them to justice.

Thompson: Shoot a nuke down a bug hole, you got a lot of dead bugs.

Romney: You see a bug hole, YOU NUKE IT!

Huckabee: Man did not evolve from insect. Do I look like insect you work with or the one who laid you off?

conservatives discussing the clintons

Conservative #1: I want to say only a couple of things. I blame Mr. Clinton for our lax attitude toward terrorism. There was plenty he could do and he didn't do. Apparently Waco and Elian Gonzales were bigger problems. I believe life under Mrs. Clinton will be very bad. Universal health care is one of her craziest ideas that comes to mind. She has no understanding of the Middle East. No understanding of economics.

Conservative #2: The real danger of Hillary's election will be the undermining of the Republic. One or more ACLU lawyers like Ginsberg will be put on the court. Someone totally scary will run the justice department. And there will be nothing to stop the democrats in control of all branches of government from pushing the most far left agenda since FDR's New Deal. If you think Healthcare is the goal, you're not thinking big enough. This power grab will be the biggest in our lifetimes. Expect your taxes to go way up, expect your civil rights such as how you r raise your children to be eroded. Expect us to give away more military secrets to hostile nations, etc. etc.

Conservative #1: I remember when Mrs. Clinton talked about eliminating the Electoral College. Talk about a fascist. That could be our next president.

Conservative #3: There is good evidence that when the Clintons first took office, Mrs. Clinton wanted to make a Communist Party fellow traveler Secretary of Education.

Ascona: I've heard Hillary plans to abolish Christmas.

Conservative #4: Ascona, rather than pass on (or create) rumour and speculation, why don't you reference news articles or reliable web sites that mention that tidbit. Frankly, I think it's ridiculous.

electability

If she were to win the Democratic Party nomination, I wonder how the Right will "swiftboat" Hillary? Not that it would necessarily succeed: the Right has thrown everything at her over the last 16 years, but she's still around. Her very existence seems to agitate a subset of American conservatives like nothing else. Maybe they'll pull quotes from a samizdat copy of her B.A. thesis at Wellesley (or maybe they'll just make them up), which will prove who the "real Hillary" really, really, really is. Ironically, what is actually revealed in the Right's Hillary obsession is the unconscious of this group of conservatives: their recurrent fears, deepest anxieties, and secret pleasures.